Review If the name of this hard drive isn’t explicit enough, one look at it will tell you exactly who it’s aimed at. The brushed aluminium surround and smoky black top mean that it looks right at home sitting beneath an iMac or Applecinema Display.
Iomega’s Mac Companion: storage plus USB hub
Iomega’s attempt to woo style-conscious users of Apple kit goes further than fluttering its eyelashes and showing a bit of leg, however. The 2TB or 3TB drive, depending on which version you choose, is formatted as HFS+, for out-of-the-box compatibility with Mac OS X. Read the rest of this entry »
Review I must confess that I do have have an extraordinary fondness for network attached storage. And when terms like ‘home media’ and ‘cloud edition’ appear on the box, then it certainly gets my attention.
Cloud cover: Iomega’s Home Media Network drive
So, while for you Iomega’s latest storage box may be unnecessarily encumbered with the kind of moniker that would make even Fiona Apple think twice, to me it conveys it’s something that could be rather useful. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Iomega’s original ScreenPlay Pro network media player was a bit of a mixed bag. It had very good connectivity features, including a video input option that allowed it to capture video as well as simply playing audio and video files that were already stored on it. However, it was let down by its inability to play H.264 video – the format used by the ubiquitous iPod and numerous other devices.
Iomega’s ScreenPlay Director
Needless to say, the first thing we did when we received the new Screenplay Director HD was to check whether it could handle H.264. It came through that test with flying colours, although we did discover a few other rough edges along the way. Even so, it’s clear that Iomega has put a bit more thought into this model than it did with its predecessor.
At first glance, the Director HD appears identical to the earlier ScreenPlay Pro. It’s a slim, glossy unit that looks like a fairly conventional hard disk, albeit with a few extra buttons on the front. Our review unit had a 1TB hard disk inside it and costs £179, and there’s also a 2TB version available for £309. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The low end of Iomega’s StorCenter range, the StorCenter ix2, is noisy, slow and lacking quite a few features you’d expect on a £300 Nas. The new StorCenter daddy, the ix4-200d, is in a different league in the speed and noise categories though, which you’d expect for 600-plus quid.
Low power, high capacity: Iomega’s StorCenter ix4-200d
Inside its squat, 16.7cm tall case, there’s a 1.2GHz Marvell 6281 CPU with 512MB Ram and four hard drives offering 2TB, 4TB and 8TB capacities. These are chopped into Raid 5 by default, although Raid 10 and JBOD formatting is also available.
There are two USB ports and two gigabit Ethernet ports on the back with one USB port handily placed on the front. There’s no eSata port to speak of though. A blue-backlit LCD is built into the front face, cycling through free space, time, date, IP address and current function. The current function, combined with two buttons, lets you select whether or not to transfer the contents of USB devices to the internal hard drives. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Iomega has re-invented its eGo portable hard drives, opting for a ‘value-added’ theme: when you purchase the ‘PS’ (Protection Suite) edition of an eGo, you get a bundle of backup and data security software included, plus slimmer, ruggedised hardware and the promise of a three-year warranty.
Iomega’s new eGo: sexier styling than before
The redesigned case is slimmer and lighter: at 89 x 136mm and barely 15mm thick, the new eGo weighs just 170g. Call us faddish, but we thought the old eGo case design was ugly, like some kitchen designer’s idea of a hipflask. The new unit has smooth edges and corners all around, which certainly makes it cuter but also more comfortable to handle and, we dare say, easier to slip into your pocket when you’re in a hurry. Read the rest of this entry »
